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Posted April 30, 2009 03:06 pm - Updated April 30, 2009 04:27 pm

Jaguars WR convinced he still has Pro Bowl juice

The top portion of Torry Holt's left middle finger is severely bent to the left, the price he's willing to pay from seven Pro Bowl seasons with the St. Louis Rams and 11 years of being an NFL elite receiver.

"It popped out and never returned to normal form," Holt says of a 2007 game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. "This is what I got out of the game, a crooked finger. it scares little kids."

Now the question the Jaguars want an answer to is this: can the veteran free agent receiver they signed to a three-year contract still scare secondaries and become the team's first 1,000-yard or Pro Bowl receiver since Jimmy Smith retired?

“Absolutely," Holt said Thursday morning at his introductory press conference before the start of Friday's minicamp "That’s the way I’ve always thought, that’s the way I train, that’s the way I prepare. And I don’t expect anything less here in Jacksonville. With David (Garrard) at the helm and these last couple days having an opportunity to kind of throw with him and listen to him and talk to him and see what his progressions are and how he dissects the game, I think it’s fitting.

"With the running game, again we feel we can get a lot of eight-man boxes with (Maurice) Jones-Drew running the football as well as Greg Jones. So we can get some eight-man boxes which allows us guys on the outside to have some one-on-ones. So for a receiver that’s an ideal situation. So I think 1,000 yards, however many touchdowns and Pro Bowl, I think is still in the picture for Torry Holt."

Last year, Holt became more of an afterthought in the Rams' offense, and those usual 1,000-yard seasons and Pro Bowl appearances came to an end. Holt was held to 64 catches for 796 yards and three touchdowns, his lowest totals since his 1999 rookie year.

"I was in a situation, and we all there in St. Louis were in a situation, where like I said before there was no continuity," Holt said. "At times there we benched our starting quarterback; we had some offensive line changes. Steven Jackson had missed some games so our running game kind of hurt us. Teams can roll and double and do things to kind of take me out of the ballgame, but I still feel like if we had all the pieces in place and their priority would have been to get me more involved, I could have had that much of a productive season I had the previous year.

"I was coming off ’07 playing in the Pro Bowl and then I got to ’08 and all of a sudden now they don’t want to use me, or I felt they didn’t want to use me as much. Now my numbers drop and now people are saying I’ve lost a step. Well maybe I have. This will be my 11th season in the National Football League. Am I running the same way I did 10 years ago? Absolutely not, but I can still play and I can still play at a high level. So hopefully coming here to Jacksonville and talking to the coaching staff, they’ll give me an opportunity to go out and play and play at a high level, and now it would be up to me to go out and contribute and do what I’ve always done.”

Only once in six playoff seasons have the Jaguars reached that destination without a go-to receiver, and that was in 2007. That year, Ernest Wilford had the most catches (45) and Reggie Williams the most yards (629) and touchdowns (10).

This offense could use a true threat who forces defenses to respect the passing game. With Holt turning 33 in June, will he have enough left in the tank to provide the Jaguars a weapon similar to Jimmy Smith at the same age?

If the offensive line can give Garrard the protection he didn't get last year, the Jaguars are betting that Holt will be at least a one-year solution.